


Hiraeth

by Cân Cennau (cancennau)



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cantair Set, Friends to Lovers, Longing, M/M, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7876777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cancennau/pseuds/C%C3%A2n%20Cennau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiraeth: a longing for a person, place or object that doesn't exist anymore.</p><p>Elim Garak longs for Cardassia and for longer hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hiraeth

Catching regnars in the scrubland near his home is one of seven-year-old Elim’s favourite pastimes, but it doesn’t always get along with his hair.

Mila sits him on the long table after one particularly grueling hunt, grumbling about the knots and dirt in his hair. The sound of a brush being pulled through the tangles, and Elim’s best efforts at not whimpering at the pain are all that can be heard in the house.

“Really, _sleg_.” Mila sighs, carefully plaiting after de-tangling. “Was your pet really worth all these knots?”

Elim looks at the regnar on his sleeve, and smiles.

* * *

 

His long hair is cut when he goes to Bamarren - a right of passage, Tain says. Best cut away all ties to childhood, focus on something new. Elim focuses on his new task, but at night he can’t help but remember those days, helping Tolan in the gardens, chasing animals, getting under Mila’s feet, and then being sat down to have his hair combed. Sometimes he winds a short hair piece around his finger, and is surprised when it unwinds sooner than he expects.

Elim wonders if Tain’s exile of him was their way of cutting ties for something new.

* * *

 

The Occupation ends, the Federation moves in and life goes on.

Elim keeps his hair short, slicked back, out of the way, cut himself - he doesn’t trust the Bajoran barbers down the Promenade. He sometimes wants to grow it long, but he needs to fit in. He watches Bajoran and Federation personnel, sees how they treat male-identified people with long hair as pariahs - subtly, of course, no-one wants to be seen as openly prejudiced against their own kind, but it’s there.

He keeps it short, but he dreams of long hair being brushed, of regnars and the scrubland of home.

* * *

 

The war comes crashing down on them, and Elim stops caring about fitting in.

Of course, he looks after himself - claws polished, scales scrubbed, clothes pressed and tailored - but he lets his hair grow a little. The fancier cuts he did on DS9 are long gone - on the Defiant, and later in Mila’s basement, there’s never any warning for disturbances, and Elim has enough pride to not want to have move to battle stations mid-cut.

Sometimes, Damar tells him it makes him look handsome, in a vaguely terrifying kind of way. Elim’s not certain if that’s a compliment or not.

* * *

 

There’s no time for haircuts on post-war Cardassia.

He grunts and shifts bricks and swears as he carves out a little cubbyhole for him to live in, beside Tain’s old place. His hair swings into his eyes, tangles in released dust, soaks up his blood, his sweat and his tears. He brushes it away, pushes it back, and more than once holds a knife to it a vague threat. He never cuts it - cutting it signifies the start of Cardassia That Isn’t Home, which is something he doesn’t particularly want to contemplate.

He works, and he works, and he _works_.

* * *

 

He works shifts on Cardassian recovery teams, shifting rubble and other things almost haphazardly. His time on DS9 really hasn’t done him any favours - the cold station and his rather sedentary tailoring lifestyle mean working in the Cardassian heat is a new kind of hell. He sweeps his hair from his face, cursing it and cursing having no oil to hold it back-

“Here-” There are hands in his hair, scratching a little at his scalp, and it’s the most contact he’s had since coming home and it’s so _good_ -

“Better?” Kelas asks, fingering his new ponytail. Elim only nods.

* * *

 

Kelas wears their hair long. It’s one of the first things you noticed about them - the rampant curls, several decades out of fashion, the long forelock braid, and how it cascaded to the middle of their back. Elim remembers how they used to braid it into thick, long ropes, before he interrogated them, before the labour camp. Kelas lets him brush it once they’re friends - closer than friends, if he’s honest.

“Why did you cut them?” Elim asks, as they work side by side on a hot Kardasi day.

“Needed to cut away some old ties.” is their simple reply.

* * *

 

Elim loved Kelas Parmak, but it’s only now he realises it. Kelas is trapped - a building collapsed on them when they tried to reach survivors. Elim’s team work all night under the light of Cardassia’s three moons to get them out.

Elim doesn’t realise how tense he is until Kelas and the survivors are pulled unharmed from the rubble, and he’s weak in the knees and shaking. Kelas embraces him immediately, and Elim doesn’t know whose tears are staining his work tunic, only that they’re both crying.

“I’m ok.” Kelas murmures, trying to reassure both themselves and Elim. “I’m alright.”

* * *

 

It would’ve come to this eventually.

Kelas has been hinting, implying, _flirting_ with him for the past few weeks, and Elim is paralyzed by indecision and fear. It comes to a head one evening when Kelas tires of his games, pulls his head back by his hair, bites his _kinat’hU,_ fingers him until he everts and fucks him until he comes with a violent shudder and a tightening grip on their hip ridges.

“Hair pulling?” Elim asks after he recovers his breath. “What happened to ‘do no harm’?”

“I know how good it feels.” Kelas replies, before kissing him again.

* * *

 

Enjoinments are terrible, Elim decides. They’re nerve-wracking and awful and he’s never been more anxious in his life.

“Did you know Cardassians used to shave their heads before enjoinments?” Elim asks Kelas in a distracted tone, pushing his hair back and gazing critically at the mirror. “Signifies a new start, changes and all that.”

“I think we’ve been through so many changes in our lifetimes.” Kelas replies, pressing a gentle kiss to his jaw. “That we’re long past symbolism. Let’s get enjoined just as we are.”

Elim smiles, and together they exit the room and head to the waiting congregation.


End file.
